The standard self-induced transparency (SIT) phenomenon represents the lossless propagation of a long multicycle stable soliton in an absorbing two-level resonant medium, if the soliton's envelope area equals $2\pi$ ($2\pi$ pulse). In this case, the leading half of the $2\pi$ pulse excites the medium, while the trailing half completely brings the medium back to the ground state. In this work, we theoretically demonstrate an analogous phenomenon for subcycle pulses propagating in an arbitrary multilevel resonant medium. The duration of the obtained solitary pulses must be smaller than the periods of resonant transitions in the medium. The obtained subcycle solitary solutions first turn an initially unexcited multi-level resonant medium to excited levels and then fully return it back to the ground state.

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• Light-matter interaction
• Optical coherence
• Optical solitons
• Ultrafast optics